Thankfully for the well-being of the neighbours, these badass speakers aren’t the real deal but in fact a sculpture entitled ‘Badussy’ (Or Machu Piccu After Dark) by the Peruvian-born and Miami-based visual artist William Cordova. His edifice was made from 200 donated 1970s- and 1980s-era chipped, clunky old stereo speakers that were generously donated by Seattleities for the sideshow to a major exhibit on the Inca’s of Peru that ran through the fall of 2013 at the Seattle Art Museum.

It alludes to modern urban subcultures, and it refers back to the glory days of vinyl and album rock (there was a few LPs scattered on the floor on the other side, mainly of the funky variety with Earth, Wind & Fire), when baby boomers piled huge stereo systems into their tiny rooms. Today, of course, mp3s and smartphones have made such hi-fi connoisseurship obsolete. Music is portable, not monumental. And that, partly, was the the point of machu picchu.

Cordova’s mini-mountain is about 15 feet high; it’s less a tower than a large stump. Nobody wants these speakers any more; nobody listens to music that way. The programme blurb reads: “Cordova has produced the semblance of an antiquity. Dimly lit, machu picchu after dark looms as if it were a monument visited at dusk; familiar as a form, though unfamiliar in its significance. Neglected or collected, the objects have been repurposed. This is how the past persists, whether walls or songs, even when its origins are forgotten.”